316 Bunk Forgery. [May, 



tbat it is not in the power oi every man to imitate. An engraver's six months' 

 ajjprentice could now forge every note of the Bank of England ! 



Tliey tell us that they have already had a committee, with Sir William Con- 

 gieve at its head ; and that they have thrown away some thousand pounds in 

 trying to make an zwimitable note ! Inimitable fools as they are ; — They might 

 throw away as many millions before they could make one. But why not do 

 their best ? Why not try to make a note as difficult of imitation as they could ? 

 For Sir William Congreve's chairmanship we may have all due respect ; but 

 he is a gentleman who had a little contrivance of his own to propose (however 

 even the originality of that may have been disputed with him); and this chair- 

 man might not be disposed to look with too favourable an eye on the inventions 

 that came before the committee. Now, the absolute fact is, that inventions of 

 extreme difficult 1/ of imitation came before the committee ; the printing in double 

 colours — the printing by a process which repeated the amount of the note 

 thousands of times over — the printing with a peculiar landscape of the finest 

 workmanship, or a varying succession of those landscapes; in short, a very 

 great number of most dexterous and difficult contrivances to render forgery too 

 expensive to be worth the trial. None of these contrivances could be pro- 

 nounced inimitable, of course: but any one of them would put forgery beyond 

 the means of every pauper workman in his garret, with no implements beyond 

 a plate of copper and a needle. In the unfortunate state in which the paper cir- 

 culation is at present, the present bank-note could be forged by any man who 

 can write a decent hand. 



But we are told, even put the notes out of the reach of this vulgar forger}^, 

 and you will have great Birmingham establishments applying their artists and 

 machinery to the production of the most finished forgeries. We disbelieve 

 this. We are satisfied, that if honesty did not deter persons of propert}' suffi- 

 cient for this in Birmingham (and we have no reason to throw any slur of the 

 kind on the higher order of artists and machinists in that town), the certainty 

 of detection after a short time, and the certainty of ruin in every shape of detec- 

 tion, would prevent forgery to any serious extent. Look to experience. In 

 all the temptations to forgery, has any important house in Birmingham, or 

 in any of our manfacturing towns, been found guilty? If there had been 

 guilt, it must have been long ago brought home to them, among the hundreds 

 of wretched agents of forgery \\\\cr have been convicted. And what they had 

 not done, when it was a work of extreme cheapness and facility, are they more 

 likely to do Mhen it shall become a business of extreme intricacy and expense? 

 But, allowing that forgery should become the business of capital manufacturers, 

 one great goodwill be done — the traffic will betaken out of the hands of the rude 

 and starving workman; it will not doubly vitiate the unfortunate being, from 

 whose punishment humanity turns away ; the law will strike none but the wealthy 

 and voluntary culprit ; and the blow that strikes but one of the gang will dis- 

 solve the conspiracy. Among the multitude that late years have brought to exe- 

 cution, the blow fell altogether without use to society. It cut off" a solitary 

 wretch: a hundred others instantly started into the trade; and this single 

 source of iniquity loaded our scaffolds, till the proverbial severity of the Cri- 

 minal Law was wearied out, and even the Bank grew sick of prosecution. 



But, to the favom-ite argument of 2«imitability. 



Since the cessation of the one-pound notes, executions for forging the circu- 

 lation have been scarcely heard of. Why ? Because our coin is very finely 

 wrought. The forgery of our silver and gold might be made profitable enough 

 for temptation, (though doubtless less profitable than that of paper); and before 

 the use of the present Mint machinery, the forgery of the coinage was formidably 

 common. This branch of iniquitous ingenuity has now nearly perished. Not 

 because M. Pistrucci';, shillings and sovereigns are beyond human imitation; but 

 because they are beyond easy imitation. Twenty years ago a shilling was like 

 a button ; and, of course, button-makers supplied the chief part of that worthy 

 circulation. Let our shillings be like buttons again, and we shall have the 

 .same artificers stripping our coats to increase our coin. 



But are the banks, that have done their best to make the note difficult, dls- 



